Speaker Stand with Hidden Storage Great Falls MT

Don't you love hearing great sound with your movies at home? A pair of these oak stands puts today's small speakers at the ideal height—3 ft. above the floor. We've built cabinets under the speakers that hold a total of 60 DVDs behind secret doors. And we've tucked the speaker wires out of sight—they run inside the stands.

Speaker Stand with Hidden Storage

Speaker Stand with Hidden Storage

Don't you love hearing great sound with your movies at home? A pair of these oak stands puts today's small speakers at the ideal height—3 ft. above the floor. We've built cabinets under the speakers that hold a total of 60 DVDs behind secret doors. And we've tucked the the speaker wires out of sight—they run inside the stands.

Start with Straight-Grained WoodWood selection makes all the difference in this project. Straight-grained pieces emphasize the stand's simple lines. Wild or angled grain is distracting, but often it's the norm in oak. No problem. If you don't mind wasting some wood, you can make your own great-looking straight-grained boards. Begin by selecting boards for the stiles and rails. You don't need many. It doesn't matter what angle the grain runs at in these pieces, as long as some of it is straight. Save the parts of these boards with really wild grain for the frames (K) and top (P) since their faces don't show. Rip the boards at an angle that follows the grain (Photo 1). Use the new edge to cut your stiles and rails.

PHOTO 2: Cut grooves in the rails and stiles to hold plywood panels and splines. The rails are very short and unsafe to hold by themselves, so push them with a shop-made jig (Fig. B).

Rail, Stiles and PanelsThe storage cabinet is basically four frame-and-panel assemblies with similar stiles and rails. They are grooved to hold plywood panels (G) and splines (E, F). The splines join each assembly. We'll use a standard blade to cut the grooves, rather than a dado blade, because 1/4-in. plywood is usually undersized.1. Rip and crosscut the stiles (A, B) and rails (C, D). Hang on to your offcuts to use as trial pieces when making the grooves. Note that the stiles are two different widths. The back has two narrow stiles; the door has two wide ones. The sides have a narrow stile in front, a wide stile in back.2. Cut the plywood panels (G) and use leftover scraps to make splines. 3. To make assembly easier, use sandpaper to slightly round the edges of the panels. 4. Select and mark the best-looking side of each rail and stile as its face. Place the face against the fence each time you cut a groove. That way, any slight variations in wood thickness will create uneven joints on the inside rather than the outside of the speaker stand. 5. Set your blade to 1/4-in. cutting depth and set your fence 1/4 in. from the blade. Cut one kerf in some trial pieces and every stile and rail (Photo 2; Fig. A, Detail 1 ). Move the fence and make a second pass in one of the trial pieces. Use a spline to check the fit of the groove. The spline should slip in easily, allowing room for glue. Adjust the fence if necess...

Using a 3/16-in. slot-cutting bit, rout grooves for splines in all the stiles and rails (Photo 2, Fig. A, Parts F1-F3 and S1-S4). All the grooves have the same offset, a 5/16-in. lip at the front and a 1/4-in. lip at the back (Fig. A, Detail 3). The front frame stiles (F1) and the front side frame stiles (S1) receive two slots.